Perspective

I was talking to a younger friend of mine. He is just starting off his career. Out of an engineering college, he landed into a software techie role. He detests the coding job from bottom of his heart. This is causing him much grief. I guess he is in the process of figuring out what he wants to do with work/ life etc.

A couple of days ago a friend of mine mailed me and 5 or 6 others, generally updating us on her life. This mailing list is a group of us who know each other well, used to hang out in college. Over the past few years after engineering, each of us moved on in the path that we chose/ life took us. So when this one friend mailed in couple of days ago, everyone chipped in with their replies and updates.

That mail trail is an interesting read. People are in different parts of the world and each of them in a different phase of life. One is married, one more engaged. The rest of us are still free birds. Some of us plan to stay single for good. One is searching for a job, one left a lucrative career to be with the love of her life in a different country. One loves her job and is enroute to becoming a CEO but she sits in a small factory town. One quit coding because she hated it, did an MBA and now isn't too happy with her job post MBA. One likes what she is doing, but wondering when exactly she should shake up the status quo. I like what I am doing, but am restless, don’t know why. In all, all of us seem to have made some progress but we are still searching, prodding around. In fact as many stated in as many words, we could spend another decade and not be sure what we want in life.

I wish, I can tell my young friend that he may be in the same situation 5 years later or may be even 15 years later. But I am sure this is the last thing he wants to hear. It is not just the destination but the journey also that is fun. Success, when one achieves the defined by destination, is a big high, giving a feeling of being on the top-of-the-world. But sometimes defining a destination alone can be limiting, giving us a false or temporary sense of success. The journey on the other hand, is where I believe, we grow up (hopefully!). For a while, it may seem like for every one step forward, we slip two steps back, but ultimately the momentum kicks in and things take off. After all, mistakes, miss-steps and false starts are what successful (wo)men call experience.

And finally, we need to sometimes, take a larger perspective and enjoy this journey, for we will pass through this way, only once in our lifetime.